Integrated Marketing: Digital Music Magazine Idiomag

Thanks to RSS and to that beautiful, self-centered, concept we call personalization, you can now have your unique digital magazine delivered daily to your in box.

To do that, UK publication idiomag uses two technologies: (1) an automated publishing system that aggregates the content via internet; (2) a personalization system of weighed tags that allow both the content and the advertising to be customized to a reader's preferences.

It works with you selecting favorite artists and music content and rating it. In fact, you create your own search tags that allow editors to assemble the appropriate articles and advertisers to reach you in a very targeted fashion. A couple of months ago the magazine also launched a personalized mp3 player to accompany the stories. Readers now receive a list of suggested tracks based on article selections.

Where do they get the content? They have partnerships with
publications, including Billboard, 365mag and
Hip Hop Nation as well as popular blogs such as Aurgasm and
BlogCritics. They also have a team of journalists that works directly
for the magazine.

From the site:

idiomag is a high-quality, digital magazine personalized to your interests in music.
It keeps you "in the know" about the artists and genres you love, while helping you discover new music. With articles, reviews, galleries and interactive features in a rich magazine format, you can access idiomag whenever and wherever you want it.

Users can read the article, play the track, view the video, check for gigs, and go off to buy the mp3 or ticket or share their views with their friends. We utilise all the knowledge this generates about our users and their interests to deliver the most relevant experience and to target the most compelling advertising.

"The big challenge is that we are simultaneously trying to move the
advertising industry forward, providing a new method for content
distribution, and asking readers to try out a new format for consuming
magazines. Lots of fun!" - Edward Barrow

If ads can be rich-media, why not content? In idiomag's case, the content adapts to the readers' evolving interests - through the rating system. They also have a Facebook integration that allows you to pull the magazine in your social application. While subscriptions are free, advertisers pay on a CPM basis, and revenue is shared with content providers based upon their content's popularity.

What social filters do they use? Extrapolated from a blog post dated July 2007:

(1) influentials and experts, those who tend to drive the conversation;

(2) friends, those you are comfortable with and who know to a certain extent;

(3) the wisdom of crowds, those we have called weak ties on whom social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook thrive.

@Chris - I do like to hold a magazine and read it in between spaces. A few years ago I subscribed to both Print and Communication Arts - a joy to the senses. I do wonder if exact personalization will take away the serendipitous discovery of musicians and music I would not naturally gravitate towards. Perhaps a weighing to wisdom of crowds will help with cross-learning.

@Christopher - experimenting and trying new things goes very well with music, doesn't it? The best in my book are Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno. Perhaps we are trading quality for quantity? Soundtracks are so personal, too! Intimate recollections of special moments, when we felt a certain way. Yeah, now that you point it out, the name sounds weird.

I had a conversation with my partner the other day about the state of music magazines. He's very much into music, long time reader of NME and Q plus the little annual books that are published in Japan that do a years wrap up on music reviews. (Print is alive and well in Japan, in part because they are always experimenting with new forms.)

He was lamenting Spin and Rolling Stone -- which are increasingly trying to be "lifestyle" magazines. And I can see why -- it seems sexier, and the pay seems better. You can sell to fashion and liquor companies who pay a lot more money for pages than record labels do. But what's the cost? The quality of writing about the MUSIC has declined -- instead, it's become about covering "the scene." In his view, music is reduced to the soundtrack for a lifestyle. And so the music suffers, and the music magazine suffers.

Perhaps idiomag (which unfortunately sounds like a contraction between "idiot" and "magazine" -- will take the focus away from lifestyle and put it back on music).